Durham Research Online

Deposited in DRO:

22 February 2013

Version of attached �le:

Published Version

Peer-review status of attached �le:

Peer-reviewed

Citation for published item:

Poulton, E. and Maguire, J. (2012) 'Plastic or fantastic Brits ? identity politics and English mediarepresentations of 'Team GB' during London 2012.', JOMEC journal., 1 (2). pp. 1-30.

Further information on publisher's website:

http://www.cardi�.ac.uk/jomec/research/journalsandpublications/jomecjournal/2-november2012/index.html

Publisher's copyright statement:

No article orThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported

License.

Use policy

The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, forpersonal research or study, educational, or not-for-pro�t purposes provided that:

• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source

• a link is made to the metadata record in DRO

• the full-text is not changed in any way

The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.

Please consult the full DRO policy for further details.

Durham University Library, Stockton Road, Durham DH1 3LY, United KingdomTel : +44 (0)191 334 3042 | Fax : +44 (0)191 334 2971

http://dro.dur.ac.uk

JOMEC JournalJournalism, Media and Cultural Studies

`Plastic` or `Fantastic` Brits? Identity Politics and English Media Representations of `Team GB` during London 2012

Durham University and Loughborough UniversityEmail: e.k.poulton@durham.ac.ukEmail: J.A.Maguire@lboro.ac.uk

Emma Poulton and Joseph Maguire

Keywords National identityIdentity politicsEstablished-outsider relationsBritishnessMediated patriot games

cf.ac.uk/jomec/jomecjournal/2-november2012/poulton_nationalidentity.pdf

Abstract

This article focuses on the dynamic relationship between media-sport and national

identity in the context of the London 2012 Summer Olympic Games. Specifically,

attention is given to the construction and representation of members of ‘Team GB’ in the

English press in the build-up to and during London 2012, against the backdrop of

contemporary British identity politics. Sporting passions can reflect prevailing moods of

the wider geo-political climate and often may even reinforce or engender these social

currents. A qualitative content analysis is used to examine the ways in which the narrative

of ‘plastic Brits’ was (re)constructed and represented through images and texts within the

English press during London 2012. A cross section of 6 daily English newspapers was

subject to this interpretive analysis from 3 August 2012 (the day of the opening

ceremony) through to 19 August 2012 (one week after the closing ceremony). We offer

three main emergent findings from our analysis of the press coverage: (1) while present

in advance of the Olympic Games, the ‘plastic Brit’ narrative was largely absent during the

Games themselves; (2) performances by ‘plastic’ members of ‘Team GB’ were de-

amplified in covert discourses pertaining to established-outsider relations: ‘plastic Brit’

successes were celebrated, though not as much as those by ‘true Brits’, whereas ‘plastic

Brit’ ‘failures’ were generally relegated to the sidelines; (3) hosting the Games and show-

casing the country to the watching world encouraged journalists and politicians alike to

(re)interpret and attempt to make sense of modern Britain.

Contributor Notes

Emma Poulton did her PhD in Sociology of Sport at Loughborough University and is a

lecturer in the School of Applied Social Sciences at Durham University. Her research

interests centre upon media representations of sport and national identity, football fan

cultures, and football-related violence. She has published in a range of international

journals and is co-editor (with Martin Roderick) of Sport in Films (2009, Routledge).

Joseph Maguire did his PhD in Sociology at the University of Leicester and is currently

Professor of Sociology of Sport at the School of Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences,

Loughborough University and Visiting Professor at the University of Copenhagen and

2

www.cf.ac.uk/JOMECjournal @JOMECjournal

University of the Western Cape. He is Past-President of both the International Sociology of

Sport Association and the International Sociological Association Research Committee 27

(Sociology of Sport). He recently received the North American Society for the Sociology of

Sport ‘Distinguished Service Award’ and the International Sociology of Sport Association’s

‘Honorary Member’s Award’. He has authored, co-authored or edited 12 books and

published in a range of international journals. His recent work includes: Sport and Migration (2010, Routledge), edited with Mark Falcous; Reflections on Process Sociology and Sport: ‘Walking the Line’ (in press, Routledge); and Sports Across Asia: Between Identity Politics, Body Cultures and Secular Ritual (in press, Routledge), edited with Katrin

Bromber and Birgit Krawietz.

3

www.cf.ac.uk/JOMECjournal @JOMECjournal

This article focuses upon the dynamic

relationship between media-sport and

national identity in the context of the

London 2012 Summer Olympic Games.

Specifically, attention is given to the

construction and representation of

members of ‘Team GB’1

1 ‘Team GB’ is the brand name adopted by the

British Olympic Association (BOA) in 1999 for the

Great Britain team that competes at the Summer

and Winter Olympic Games. It is comprised of

athletes from the UK, plus the three Crown

dependencies (Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of

Man) and all but three of the fourteen British

Overseas Territories. This moniker is somewhat

controversial due to its focus upon Great Britain,

at the exclusion of the other contributing nation-

states. Indeed, the ‘back-to-front’ grammatical

labelling of ‘Team GB’ could be seen as a ‘plastic’

invention itself, borrowing heavily from ‘Team

USA’ and ‘Team Australia’ respectively.

in the English

press in the build-up to and during

London 2012, against the backdrop of

contemporary British identity politics.

This is marked by the contested nature

of the United Kingdom of Great Britain

and Northern Ireland (UK), with the

Scottish First Minister, Alex Salmond,

from the Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP)

calling for independence from the Union,

while sections of the euro-sceptic UK

continue to struggle to find a post-

Empire geo-political status.

A further characteristic of concurrent

British identity politics is an on-going

debate over what constitutes ‘Britishness’

in multicultural Britain today. Indeed, the

tension between those who advocate

that ‘newcomers’ should adhere to

British traditions and those who

emphasise a respect for the richness of

the diversity of modern British culture

underlies much of the press coverage we

examine (for further discussion of this

see Fenton 2007; Kumar 2010; McCrone

2002). Some of these sentiments were

reflected in the tone of the pre-Games

reporting, much of which was generally

sceptical about hosting the Olympics

due to escalating costs and security

concerns, as the UK tried to cope with

the global recession and repercussions

of the euro-zone debt crisis.

Whannel (2002:23) explains how,

‘National belonging-ness is inscribed into

discursive practices which seek to

mobilise national identities as part of the

way in which our attention is engaged

with a narrative hermeneutic. We want to

know who will win it and ‘we’ hope that it

will be our ‘own’ competitor’. However,

for Great Britain, this was complicated at

London 2012 by the make-up of ‘Team

GB’, with some of its members having

‘acquired’ British citizenship as ‘dual

nationals’, through serving the minimum

4

www.cf.ac.uk/JOMECjournal @JOMECjournal

residence period, or through marriage.

These sportsmen and women were

labelled ‘plastic Brits’ by their critics in

the English media, instigated by the

right-leaning Daily Mail newspaper,

renowned for its traditionally

conservative values and concerns about

multiculturalism and immigration. This

label, questioning their authenticity as

‘British’, was underpinned by a belief

that: ‘Plastic Brits are Using Team GB to

Fulfil their Own Olympic Dreams’ (Samuel

2011).

Whether in success or defeat, sporting

passions – or what we have termed

elsewhere ‘mediated patriot games’

(Maguire and Poulton 1999; Poulton

2004) – can reflect prevailing moods of

the wider geo-political climate and often

may even reinforce or engender these

social currents. Consequently, it is

important to understand the

contemporary socio-cultural and

politico-economic climate, which is

currently characterised by glocalising

trends. Elite labour migration is an

established feature of the sporting ‘global

village’ (Maguire 2008). This migration

primarily involves athletes, but also

includes coaches, officials,

administrators and sports scientists

located within a wider sports industrial

complex. While the Daily Mail’s Des Kelly

(2012) refers to this as ‘athletic tourism’,

this movement of ‘workers’ occurs both

within and between nations and

continents on a global basis, facilitated in

part by the growing flexibility of the

transnational labour market (Maguire

and Falcous 2010). Although migrant

athletic labour has been a feature of

global sport for some time, its frequency

and extent has grown in complexity and

intensity over recent decades (Maguire

2008; Maguire and Falcous 2010). This

study is therefore theoretically

contextualised by the interdependent

concepts of identity politics and the

processes of globalisation. It is within this

process and sociological framework,

underpinned by the work of Norbert Elias

– which has also been utilised elsewhere

(Lee and Maguire 2011; Maguire and

Burrows 2005; Maguire, Poulton and

Possamai 1999a, 1999b; Maguire and

Poulton 1999; Maguire and Tuck 2005;

Poulton 2004; Vincent, Kian, Pedersen,

Kuntz and Hill 2010) – that the

relationship between sport and national

identity is investigated.

The main objective here is to probe the

framing, construction and representation

of members of ‘Team GB’, at both

manifest and latent levels, in the English

media-sport discourse surrounding

5

www.cf.ac.uk/JOMECjournal @JOMECjournal

London 2012. Using a variety of

techniques and production codes –

notably through the use of personal

pronouns and reference to national traits

and symbols – media-sport personnel

contribute to the (re)production of

established-outsider relations (Elias

1991, Elias and Scotson1994) through

the construction and representation of a

series of ‘I/we’ and ‘us/them’ identities at

a national level (Whannel 1992; Blain,

Boyle and O’Donnell 1993; Rowe, McKay

and Miller 1998; Crolley and Hand 2002;

Hills and Kennedy 2009; Maguire and

Poulton 1999; Tuck 2003; Poulton 2004).

Examining the use of such journalistic

practices will allow for an exploration

into precisely who the English press

chose to include/embrace as members

of ‘Team GB’, and who they opted to

exclude/reject, as ‘plastic Brits’.

Martin Samuel, sports columnist for the

Daily Mail, first coined the phrase ‘plastic

Brit’ in June 2011 in relation to

American-born sprint hurdler Tiffany

Ofili-Porter. Reacting to Ofili-Porter

breaking Angie Thorp’s fifteen year old

British 100m hurdles record, he claimed:

‘We have allowed it to be stolen by a

plastic Brit who is using Team GB to fulfil

her own Olympic ambitions’ through a

‘self-serving adoption’ of ‘the GB flag of

convenience’. Samuel’s grievance was

with the head coach of UK Athletics,

(Dutch-born) Charles van Commenee’s

selection policy and methods to build a

stronger team in preparation for London

2012:

Fortunately, he has a plan. We're

going to cheat. Not literally,

obviously. That would be wrong.

Team GB's cheating is more a

convenient manipulation of the

rules, coming together with our

colonial past, to create the option

of securing the best of America's

cast-offs, plus the odd Caribbean

ringer… [to carry] the GB flag of

convenience (Samuel 2011).2

This signalled the start of a sustained

year-long campaign by the Daily Mail against ‘plastic Brits’ – loosely defined as

athletes, born overseas, ‘who swapped

their flags’ to compete for ‘Team GB’ (but

with some caveats, as we will

2 Samuel specifically identified Shara Proctor

(from Anguilla) and American-born Shana Cox

and Tiffany Ofili-Porter as those ‘carrying the GB

flag of convenience’. The latter athlete is referred

to variously in the media as Tiffany Ofili (her

maiden name), Tiffany Porter (her married name

since May 2011) and sometimes with a double-

barrel surname. This is reflected throughout this

article.

6

www.cf.ac.uk/JOMECjournal @JOMECjournal

demonstrate) – ahead of London 2012,

which will be outlined below.

Methods

Whannel (1992:121) notes that ‘star

performers are characters within a set of

narratives’, which are (re)constructed and

(re)produced by media personnel. Their

narrative bank is rich, albeit formulaic,

since ‘sport offers everything a good

story should have: heroes and villains,

triumph and disaster, achievement and

despair, tension and drama’ (Poulton and

Roderick (2008: xviii). Whannel (2002)

also identifies sets of narrative functions

in the narrativisation of sport stars’

careers that help to make sense of

moments in their lives. These pre-

existing narrative structures include: the

‘golden success story’, the ‘ups and

downs story’ or the ‘rise and fall

narrative’. As Hills and Kennedy

(2009:113) advocate, an understanding of

‘the existing narrative scripts used to

frame the events of a sport star’s career’

is helpful since ‘analysis of narratives in

cultural texts can illuminate values and

discourses within specific cultures’.

We used a qualitative content analysis

(Mayring 2000) to explore the ways in

which the narrative of ‘plastic Brits’ was

(re)constructed and represented through

texts and images within the English

press both before and during the London

2012 Olympic Games. Prior to London

2012, we adopted a directed approach

using the online search engine Google to

generate pertinent newspaper articles

relating to the construction and

reproduction of the Daily Mail’s campaign against ‘plastic Brits’, using

combinations of key words as a guide for

the initial codes and units of analysis.

This deductive application of categories

helped us to explore the discursive use

of pertinent themes and patterns to

better understand the (re)construction of

the narrative. Key words in the coding

frame included: ‘plastic Brits’; ‘Team GB’;

‘flag of convenience’; and ‘dual

nationals/nationality’, together with the

names of athletes identified by the Daily Mail as ‘plastic Brits’.

The online search also helped us to

identify ‘key moments’ in the

newspaper’s campaign. As noted above,

this began in June 2011 (when

American-born Tiffany Porter first

competed for ‘Team GB’ and broke a

long-standing British hurdles record) and

developed in advance of the Games,

‘peaking’ in March 2012 when Porter was

appointed captain of Great Britain’s

athletics team for the World Indoor

7

www.cf.ac.uk/JOMECjournal @JOMECjournal

Athletic Championships. The narrative

became newsworthy again when the

BOA confirmed who had been selected

for ‘Team GB’ in July 2012. 156 online

newspaper articles were subject to

analysis pre-London 2012.

During the Games themselves, a cross

section of 6 daily English newspapers

were subject to this interpretive

analytical approach from 3 August 2012

(the day of the opening ceremony)

through to 19 August 2012 (one week

after the closing ceremony). These were:

the ‘middle market’ Daily Mail; two

tabloids: The Sun and Daily Mirror; and

three broadsheets: The Times, The Guardian and Daily Telegraph (together

with their Sunday equivalents). Online

versions of the newspapers were

accessed when hard copies were

unavailable. The same key words and

athletes names that were used in the

qualitative content analysis of the pre-

London 2012 press coverage were

applied to the analysis of the

newspapers during the Games. Overall,

573 newspaper articles were subject to

analysis.

Given time-spatial constraints, here we

present some of our initial readings and

findings: first, from the construction of

the ‘plastic Brit’ narrative; second, from

the reproduction of the narrative in press

coverage of the announcement of ‘Team

GB’ for the Olympics; and third, from the

representation of some of the so-called

‘plastic’ members of ‘Team GB’ during

the London 2012 Games, namely: Philip

Hindes, Yamilé Aldama, and Tiffany

Porter, for reasons explained below.

Constructing the ‘Plastic Brit’ Narrative

From June 2011 onwards, Daily Mail sportswriters steadily built their narrative

about ‘plastic Brits’, framing them as

‘outsiders’ to the collective notion of

‘Team GB’. Typical headlines included:

‘Plastic Brits are Cashing in (but there’s

no Lottery money for the likes of Kelly

[Sotherton])’, with Neil Wilson (2011)

complaining that ‘‘plastic Brits’… will

have their Olympic campaigns funded by

the National Lottery while British-born

contenders have been dropped 10

months from the Games’ (Daily Mail, 17

October 2011).

A catalyst for the Daily Mail’s campaign

against the ‘overseas imports’ came with

the appointment of ‘mercenary’ Tiffany

Porter as captain of the GB athletics

team for the World Indoor

Championships in March 2012: ‘Now the

Plastic Brits are Taking Over! Porter is

8

www.cf.ac.uk/JOMECjournal @JOMECjournal

Controversial Choice as Team GB

Captain’ (Anon. 2012a). Wilson (2012)

remonstrated: ‘There’s No Way I’ll be

Standing for National Anthem when

‘Plastic Brit’ Porter Wins Gold’ (Daily Mail, 9 March 2012). Claiming that she was ‘as

American as apple pie’, he lamented:

‘Porter is one of many athletes flying

under the flags of convenience of

countries not their own’.

Jonathan McEvoy (Daily Mail, 8 March

2012) – also reinforcing Porter’s ‘real’

nationality – asked: ‘… on Independence

Day last year... Who tweeted this? ‘It’s July

4. Wishing I was in the States to

celebrate this special day. I’m definitely

there in spirit’’. McEvoy gave readers the

answer: ‘Of course, it was Porter, the self-

serving arriviste who, with the help of a

Dutch head coach who would enter a

Martian if the paperwork worked out,

uses Britain like a doormat’. Playing the

patriot trump card, McEvoy explained:

‘British athletics played fast and loose

with our national identity on Thursday by

appointing as captain a ‘Plastic Brit’ who

would not – or cannot – recite the words

of God Save The Queen’. Challenging her

‘British’ credentials at a press

conference, McEvoy reported how he

had enquired if she knew the words to

the National Anthem: ‘The point is not so

much whether she knows the anthem by

heart… but that the question has any

relevance at all’. As his headline

indicated, it was McEvoy’s belief that: ‘It

Could Have Been Farah or Ennis but Our

Athletes Will Be Led By a Plastic Brit’

(Daily Mail, 8 March 2012). His preference

was for one of whom he described as

‘the two modern greats of British track

and field, Jessica Ennis and Mo Farah’.

The latter suggestion was an interesting

one given the Daily Mail’s ‘plastic Brit’

narrative. Mohamed Farah, a Muslim,

moved to Britain as a young boy having

been born in war-torn Somalia, so under

the Daily Mail’s criteria, technically

qualified as ‘plastic’. Indeed, there was

disagreement between Daily Mail colleagues over whether Farah was to be

accepted as a ‘true Brit’ or excluded as

‘plastic’. Established-outsider relations

were to the fore in the media discourse.

Kelly (2012) commented on the

‘controversy’ the Daily Mail’s label had

caused:

When the American-born Tiffany

Porter took her first, awkward bow

as captain of the British athletics

team, everyone was told she did

not deserve the label 'Plastic Brit'.

Who said so? Britain's head coach,

Charles van Commenee, while

alongside him world 5,000m

9

www.cf.ac.uk/JOMECjournal @JOMECjournal

champion Mo Farah complained

he felt 'disgusted' by the line of

questioning Porter had to face. And

so a Dutchman brought up in

Amsterdam and the Somalian-

born runner who lives in Portland,

Oregon were on hand to refute the

accusations that Porter was not

'British enough' (Daily Mail, 9

March 2012).

Despite Kelly’s dismissal of Farah’s

British authenticity, his colleague Wilson

(2012) embraced Farah, distinguishing

him from Porter and fellow ‘American’

Shana Cox, who qualified ‘because of a

parental affiliation to Britain which they

had not chosen to use until it became

financially and competitively attractive’.

For Wilson, Farah’s case was ‘very

different’:

Because his change of nationality

had nothing to do with athletics, or

with seeking a lift in cash or status.

Farah came when still of primary

school age when he was

summoned by his father who was

a resident already of Britain. His

entire athletics career has been

spent in Britain under its system of

coaching and support. His

successes are Britain’s successes

(Daily Mail, 8 March 2012).

Here Wilson, unlike Kelly, claimed Farah

as ‘one of us’, an established ‘true Brit’,

because he had been immersed in

British culture, education and coaching

structure since his youth, rather than

recently for perceived mercenary gains.

The disagreement between Daily Mail personnel was observed elsewhere. For

example, a headline in the New Statesman magazine (13 March 2012)

mocked: ‘‘Plastic Brits’ — and the Mail’s Struggle to Decide Who Isn’t British’.

Columnist Sunder Katwala noted: ‘The

fierce polemics of the Mail's sportswriters

against some of the foreign-born athletes

who have qualified to compete for Britain

have demonstrated a comical inability to

agree among themselves over whose

British identity to challenge as fake’ (New Statesman, 13 March 2012). Elsewhere,

other media outlets helped to maintain

the position of the ‘plastic Brit’ story on

the (sports) news agenda in the guise of

‘reporting on’ the issue. For example, the

Daily Telegraph’s Sport supplement (9

March, pp. 2-3) headlined with: ‘Farah’s

Fury Over ‘plastic Brits’ Storm’. The

majority of newspapers, amidst the

circulation battle, sought to distance

themselves from the Daily Mail’s position.

In the left-leaning tabloid Daily Mirror, Mike Walters, announced: ‘The time has

come to stop labelling our dual-

10

www.cf.ac.uk/JOMECjournal @JOMECjournal

nationality athletes as ‘Plastic Brits’’.

Denouncing the ideology propagated by

sections of the right-leaning media and

in a clear side-swipe at the Daily Mail in

particular, he noted:

Of all the spiteful, pejorative labels

pinned to athletes with dual

nationality, ‘Plastic Brits’ is by far

the nastiest. By its very nature, the

phrase is divisive and demeaning.

Why not go the whole hog and just

call them bogus asylum seekers?

Well, that’s what right-wing foot

soldiers would like us to believe,

isn't it? (Daily Mirror, 15 March

2012).

Amidst this criticism, the Daily Mail’s Samuel (2012a) – instigator of the

original charge against ‘plastic Brits’ the

previous year – responded to reactions

to ‘The Plastic Brit debate, started on

these pages and pounced on by every

other newspaper and, Saturday night,

BBC news’ and argued:

Hypocrites, xenophobes, plastic

patriots, we’ve been called a few

names this week for daring to

question Great Britain’s

competitors of convenience. UK

Athletics says we’re banned... We’re

ranting and raving, according to

one newspaper. We have a right-

wing agenda. And all for saying it

would be better if international

sport had meaning, and the Great

Britain team reflected the true

standards of British athletes and

coaches, shorn of false

achievement.... It really isn’t about

patriotism, purity or fear of a

foreign invasion as these artificial

intellects would have you believe,

either… it cuts directly to the spirit

and meaning of competitive sport

at national level and addresses it’s

decreasing worth in an age of

naked opportunism (Daily Mail, 12

March 2012).

Samuel (2012a) thus challenged British

sport and foreign policy head on: ‘If even

international sporting bodies refuse to

embrace the principle that nationality

matters, that events should compose the

best of yours against the best of theirs,

then what is the purpose?’

Samuel’s observations highlight the

complex and contested nature of

international sport (Maguire 2012).

However, at a more latent level of

meaning – and despite his claims to the

contrary – his comments (and those of

some of his Daily Mail colleagues) could

be decoded as a thinly-veiled

‘immigration policy’ for who should be

11

www.cf.ac.uk/JOMECjournal @JOMECjournal

granted British citizenship (and therefore

be permitted to represents us) and who

were ‘outsiders’. The ‘plastic Brit’

narrative can thus be read as an insight

into right-wing perceptions about Britain

and ‘Britishness’ and underscored by an

anti-multiculturalism that struggles to

celebrate dual-nationals as truly one of

us. Let us unpack this debate.

Conceptualising the ‘plastic Brit’

narrative: media-sport, citizenship and

national identity politics

The controversial nature of the narrative

of ‘plastic Brits’ raises complex issues of

citizenship, national identity and identity

politics, as well as the interconnections

between sport achievement, foreign

policy and elite athletic migration. For as

Maguire (2008:451) notes: ‘Issues of

attachment to place, notions of self-

identity and allegiance to a specific

country are significant in this regard’. To

help make sense of these issues, we first

consider the inter-relationship between

media-sport and national identity

politics, before discussing the British

identity politics against which London

2012 took place.

Sport is widely recognised as an

important source of collective

identification and is arguably the most

potent and visible symbol of national

identity. International sporting contests

act as a form of ritualised war, serving as

symbolic representations of inter-state

competition (Elias 1996). Yet, it is the

media’s framing of such competition that

vividly brings into being the cultural and

ideological significance of sport. Using a

variety of production codes and

techniques, media-sport contributes to

the construction and representation of

‘established-outsider relations’ through a

series of ‘I/we’ (Elias 1991, 1994) and

‘us/them’ identities at a national level

(Blain et al. 1993; Crolley and Hand

2002; Hills and Kennedy 2009; Maguire

and Poulton 1999; Tuck 2003; Poulton

2004; Whannel 1992).

It is in this context that media personnel

play a pivotal role by drawing upon the

myths of collectivity and unity,

emphasising the nation as embodied in

its athletic representatives (Rowe et al.

1998). In this way, media-sport has the

ideological power to both represent and

re-present the ‘imagined community’ of

the nation (Anderson 1983), at both the

manifest and latent levels of meaning.

‘We’ learn about ‘our’ national character,

‘our’ history and ‘our’ society via national

habitus codes (Lee and Maguire 2011;

Maguire and Burrows 2005; Maguire et

12

www.cf.ac.uk/JOMECjournal @JOMECjournal

al. 1999a, 1999b; Maguire and Poulton

1999; Maguire and Tuck, 2005; Poulton

2004; Vincent, et al. 2010).

Sporting mega-events, such as the

Olympic Games, have a transnational

dimension. Equally, however, they also

serve as vehicles for the expression of

national identities (Hilvoorde, Elling, and

Stokvis 2010). The host nation, in

particular, is at the core of the Olympic

spectacle. Through the media coverage

of the opening and closing ceremonies

and by the way the performances of the

‘home’ athletes are mediated, national

unity, self-image and external

perceptions are constructed and

represented. These occasions allow for

the people of the host nation to express

both their self and group image (i.e. their

‘I/we’ identity). In this way, media

personnel help people to invent, imagine

and interpret past (and present) glories

and construct an image of what the

nation is and what its people should

think and feel they are in the

contemporary world. From a process

sociological perspective, these long-term

developments and changes in people’s

social behaviour, their habitus, are

intertwined. As Elias observes (1996:151):

The love for one’s nation is never

only a love for persons or groups

of whom one says ‘you’; it is always

the love of a collectivity to which

one can refer as ‘we’... The image

of a nation experienced by an

individual who forms part of that

nation, therefore, is also a

constituent of that person’s self-

image.

People then experience a sense of

collective national characteristics as

embodied representations of themselves.

These embodied characteristics form

sleeping memories and conscious

thoughts that find expression in and are

reinforced by national institutions,

symbols and collective occasions of

perceived national importance, such as

sporting events. Dormant national

memories are vividly awakened through

the media coverage of international sport

events: in this context a narrative of who

‘we’ and ‘they’ are is on display. By

studying such media discourse, aspects

of the processes through which national

habitus is framed, constructed and

represented can be explored. In this

context it is possible to examine how

national identity is formed and

transformed within and in relation to

representations that generate contested

notions of identity, loyalty, allegiance and

belonging. The study of mediated

13

www.cf.ac.uk/JOMECjournal @JOMECjournal

accounts of ‘plastic Brits’ highlights these

dynamics in quite a vivid manner.

That is, these ‘codes of being’ are built

around a core of significations, which

help us to know who we are, how to

think, how to feel and how to behave as

a citizen of the nation (Maguire 2011;

Maguire and Poulton 1999). As such,

habitus codes often find expression in

‘mediated patriot games’ (Maguire and

Poulton 1999; Tuck 2003; Poulton 2004),

which are frequently framed by media

personnel as vivid contests between ‘us’

and ‘them’. By studying media-sport

discourse, aspects of the processes

through which ‘our’ national

habitus/character is framed, constructed

and represented by and through

discursive practices can become more

evident. These discursive practices of

media-sport, for example, present us

with a set of consciously created images,

histories and symbols that confer

meaning on what it is to be part of the

nation, or in this case, ‘Team GB’. For

further discussion of this in relation to

complex nature of Great Britain, see:

Burdsey 2007; Falcous 2007; Hills and

Kennedy 2009; and Reid 2010. Knowing

the words to and (actively) singing the

National Anthem is a case in point, as

illustrated by the Daily Mail’s indignation

when Tiffany Porter declined their

invitation to sing it.

Ruling Cool Britannia? The Monarchy

and British identity politics in modern

Britain

The ‘plastic Brit’ narrative should also be

understood in the broader context of a

year that saw the UK ‘celebrate’ two

occasions of perceived national

importance: Queen Elizabeth II’s

Diamond Jubilee and London host the

Olympic Games. Indeed, the construction

and reproduction of a patriotic ‘feel-good

factor’ had been high on the mainstream

British media agenda since the Royal

Wedding of Prince William and Kate

Middleton (the Duke and Duchess of

Cambridge) in April 2011, with few

dissenting voices. This was reinforced

during the Olympic Games themselves,

for example, when the faces of the Royal

Family (especially younger members)

were prevalent across both the print and

broadcast media. First, The Queen and

the Duke of Edinburgh took part in the

opening ceremony, with the Queen

herself ‘starring’ in a memorable

‘television moment’ as she appeared in a

comedic sketch with ‘James Bond’

during Danny Boyle’s epic production.

Other members of the Royal Family were

14

www.cf.ac.uk/JOMECjournal @JOMECjournal

also in attendance and continued to be

a presence across the Olympic venues

(and consequently in the media) as

‘cheer leaders’ for ‘Team GB’ throughout

the Games, led by BOA ambassadors

and ‘media favourites’: the Duke and

Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry.

Princes William and Harry were also

television studio guests, interviewed by

Sue Barker, during the BBC’s coverage (3

August 2012). Their cousin, Zara Phillips,

competed for ‘Team GB’ in the team

equestrian event, winning the silver

medal which was presented by her

mother, The Princess Royal (President of

the BOA and an Olympian herself), who

was also a spectator at many other

events. Finally, Prince Harry was The

Queen’s official representative at the

closing ceremony.

The English media were complicit in this

‘PR exercise’ for the Royal Family. For

example, in a full-page feature, the Daily Mirror (9 August 2012:3) headlined with a

word-play on the National Anthem: ‘God

Save the Team’. The article quoted from

a royal press release: ‘The Duke and

Duchess and Prince Harry are thrilled

with the success of the British athletes’.

With reference to some of the defining

principles of British national identity and

habitus, the press release continued:

‘They believe the athletes and their

support team represent the very best of

British: dedication, fair play, sense of

humour and friendship’. The article

concluded with a ‘tribute to the royals for

‘raising the profile’ of the nation at home

and abroad’ from the UK Minister for

Sport and the Olympics, Hugh Robertson

MP. He was quoted as saying of the

young royals: ‘Their support has made a

difference’. The weaving together of the

Jubilee celebrations, the Olympics and

the role of the Royal Family in English

media-sport discourse arguably

reinforced traditional notions of

‘Britishness’ and a Kingdom that was

united (despite Scottish Nationalist calls

for independence).

How many ‘plastic Brits’ in ‘Team GB’?

English press representations of pre-

London 2012

Following the intensification of the Daily Mail’s campaign against ‘plastic Brits’ as

‘outsiders’ ahead of the World Indoor

Athletics Championships in March 2012,

the story resurfaced again as London

2012 approached. This was not led by

the Daily Mail in the first instance.

Instead, other newspapers brought the

‘plastic Brit’ narrative to the forefront of

the (sport) news agenda by ‘reporting on’

the story. For example, the online edition

15

www.cf.ac.uk/JOMECjournal @JOMECjournal

of the Daily Telegraph (10 July 2012)

featured an info-graphic detailing where

the 11% of ‘Team GB’ who were born

outside of the UK originated. The online

article was headlined: ‘Team GB: ‘Plastic

Brits’ – Where do They Come From?’ and

led with the fact that ‘60 of 542 ‘home’

Team GB members were born abroad’.

Simon Hart (2012) explained:

It is the topic that has divided

opinion in the run-up to London

2012: whether it is right that

overseas-born athletes – or ‘Plastic

Brits’ as they have been labelled –

should be allowed to take the

place of home-grown competitors

at the Olympic Games. Now the

issue will come under fresh

scrutiny after research carried out

by the Daily Telegraph revealed

that of the 542 Team GB members

who were announced on Monday,

60 – 11 per cent – of them were

born abroad. The figure has been

inflated by some athletes who

were simply born away from home

to British parents, though the vast

majority are dual nationals who

joined the GB ranks only after

London was chosen as the 2012

host city seven years ago…

With the reproduction of the ‘plastic Brit’

narrative here, the Daily Telegraph –

another Conservative leaning newspaper

– appeared to echo the Daily Mail’s campaign and ideological position. As if

to re-emphasise the ‘controversy’, Hart

(2012) continued:

The issue has provoked a heated

debate in Britain, with some critics

condemning the new arrivals as

little more than sporting

mercenaries, while others have

argued that if an athlete has a UK

passport, then he or she is

perfectly entitled to compete

under the Union Flag.

The article went on to quote Andy Hunt,

the Chief Executive of the BOA and chef de mission of ‘Team GB’, who defended

Britain’s selection rules as ‘clear and fair’:

‘There are no Plastic Brits’, he said.

‘As far as I’m concerned, if you’re a

British citizen with a British

passport and you are eligible to

compete for this country, then

fantastic. If you win a place on

merit, you should be in the team....

If you actually look at our eligibility

rules in this country, it’s very, very

hard to get citizenship compared

to other countries. We don’t do

16

www.cf.ac.uk/JOMECjournal @JOMECjournal

passport trading as many nations

do. Yes, we’ve got a number of

individuals in the team who are

dual passport-holders or who have

gained nationality over the last few

years, but I’m comfortable with

where we’ve got to, and there are

no Plastic Brits’.

The Daily Telegraph’s ‘research’ helped to

fuel the Daily Mail’s simmering campaign.

A day before the Daily Telegraph

published its own findings, the Daily Mail (9 July 2012) presented readers with

‘Your Guide to Team GB’. Without any

explicit reference to ‘plastic Brits’, the

newspaper listed the ‘date of birth, place

of birth and where the athletes live’. The

covert meaning here was to implicitly

underline who was a ‘true’ Brit, through

their birth right and choice of where to

live. Two days later, the sports pages of

the Daily Mail (11 July 2012) were more

explicit, headlining with: ‘Team GB have

61 ‘Plastic Brits’ Taking Part in London

Olympics’ (Anon. 2012b). The article

declared: ‘The controversy over ‘plastic

Brits’ has been reignited by the

revelation that Team GB will have 61

overseas-born athletes competing at this

summer’s London Olympics’, explaining

how ‘a Daily Telegraph survey has

revealed that 11 per cent of the 542-

strong were born abroad’. That this

statistically reflected contemporary

multicultural Britain – ‘Twelve per cent of

people in Britain today are foreign-born’

(Katwala 2012) – was overlooked.

Indeed, the Telegraph Online ‘interactive

map’ highlighted how 8 ‘foreign born

athletes have represented other

countries’ prior to selection for ‘Team

GB’. These included the track and field

athletes Yamilé Aldama, Shara Proctor

and Tiffany Porter, who had originally

ignited the Daily Mail’s ‘plastic Brit’

debate. While athletics received the most

media attention pre-London 2012

regarding new arrivals from overseas, in

fact Britain’s 78-strong athletics squad

included relatively few overseas-born

team members (8) compared to some

other Olympic sports. In handball, 9 out

of the total 28 players in men and

women’s squads were foreign-born

competitors, including Yvonne Leuthold

(Switzerland) and Seb Prieto (Monaco),

cited as having previously competed for

their ‘home’ nations. Across the men’s

and women’s basketball squads, 8 of the

24 players were born overseas, including

one from Australia, Bermuda and Sudan,

two from Canada, and three from the

USA (see Falcous and Maguire 2005 for a

discussion of the ‘Americanization’ of

British basketball). The Ukrainian-born

Olga Butkevych was the sole member of

17

www.cf.ac.uk/JOMECjournal @JOMECjournal

the British wrestling team. She was

recruited by British Wrestling’s head

coach, Nicolai Koryeyev (also from the

Ukraine) in 2007 as a sparring partner to

the British team and received her British

passport just months before the start of

London 2012.

While these features are worthy of

further attention, our focus here is upon

3 of the 8 members of ‘Team GB’

identified by the Daily Telegraph as

having ‘switched allegiance’ and thereby

allows us to examine how these most

‘plastic’ of Brits were represented. These

Olympians are: Philip Hindes, Yamilé

Aldama, and Tiffany Porter. Their

representation in the English press

enables us to illustrate wider questions

of British identity politics.

Representations of ‘Team GB’ during

London 2012: ‘plastic’ or ‘fantastic’?

Success by ‘plastic Brits’ presented some

of the press corps – notably those from

the Daily Mail given the newspaper’s

sustained campaign against them – with

a challenge to conventional

understandings of sporting heroism and

traditional narrative formations (Hills and

Kennedy 2009). Daily Mail sports

reporters were seemingly faced with the

dilemma of how to frame and ‘celebrate’

the heroics and victories of athletes their

newspaper opposed to being

(established) members of ‘Team GB’:

were they to be heralded as ‘fantastic’ or

remain as ‘plastic’?

Relatively unknown to the mainstream

English sports media prior to the

Olympics, cyclist, Philip Hindes, was part

of the three-man gold-winning sprint

team at London 2012. Following their

success, co-rider Sir Chris Hoy3

3 While outside the scope of this article, the issue

of the identity of Scottish Olympians, such as Hoy

and Andy Murray, vis-á-vis their British identity

was linked in some press discourse to the

debate regarding SNP plans for an independence

referendum.

dominated all of the front pages (with the

exception of The Times, which led with

Great Britain’s gold-winning men’s canoe

slalom pair), as the English press

celebrated the (Scottish) rider’s fifth

Olympic gold, which confirmed him as

one of Britain’s most successful

Olympians (along with 2012 Tour de

France winner, Bradley Wiggins – born in

Belgium, albeit to British parents, a fact

largely overlooked by the English media

– and Sir Steve Redgrave, whose record

Hoy surpassed later in the Games by

winning a sixth gold medal). In fact, there

was little mention of team-mates Hindes

18

www.cf.ac.uk/JOMECjournal @JOMECjournal

and Jason Kenny as Hoy’s heroics stole

the headlines. While there was no explicit

mention of ‘plastic Brits’, identity politics

were still seemingly on the Daily Mail’s (3

August 2012:2) agenda as their reporters

pointed to the fact that Hindes was

‘German-born’ and emphasised his (dual)

nationality through a narrative suggesting

that Hindes was responsible for nearly

denying his team (and especially Hoy)

Olympic gold.

The story was developed on the back-

page as Ivan Speck (2012) wrote: ‘Great

Britain’s gold medal-winning cyclists

were mired in controversy last night after

Sir Chris Hoy’s young team-mate

claimed he intentionally crashed

following a poor start in their heat.

German-born Philip Hindes, 19, said it

was a ploy to force a restart’ (Daily Mail, 3 August 2012: 88). This narrative did not

feature prominently in other newspapers.

However, Hindes’ dual nationality was

highlighted, sometimes covertly,

sometimes more overtly. Marsden and

Rayner (2012) in the Daily Telegraph (3

August 2012:2) profiled ‘The Young Heir

to the Cycling Crown’ in a feature that

explained how:

Hindes, 19, who was born in

Germany and competed for their

national team until 2010, led Team

GB’s world record breaking team

sprint with Hoy and Jason Kenny…

Hindes’ mother is German, and it

was only in October 2010 that he

joined British Cycling’s academy

programme, qualifying through his

father, an RAF airman who served

in Germany.

His parentage was also identified by

other newspapers, though it is

noteworthy which parent (and therefore

nationality) was listed first and the

emphasis placed on his father serving in

the British Armed Forces. For example,

The Sun (The Games supplement, 3

August 2012: 4) refrained from the

‘German’ prefix, describing the ‘young

Hindes, son of a British soldier based

overseas and brought up in Germany’ (i.e.

British first, German second). Similarly,

Richard Williams, writing in The Guardian

(3 August 2012:3) told how: ‘Hindes has a

British father and a German mother and

was representing his mother’s country at

junior level until the coaches of British

Cycling snatched him away last year to

fulfil a role as the trio’s powerhouse

lead-off man. Last night Germany took

bronze’. Owen Slot in The Times (The Games supplement, 3 August 2012:4)

also sought to emphasise that Hindes

was a ‘coup’ for ‘Team GB’, outlining how

just two years ago he was a ‘young

19

www.cf.ac.uk/JOMECjournal @JOMECjournal

German boy… born to a British father…

[who] was itching to switch sides’.

Meanwhile, the Daily Mirror (3 August

2012:2) appeared to make light of the

situation by describing Hindes as ‘a

German with a Brit dad who learnt

English by watching Inbetweeners DVDs’.

The representation of Hindes indicates

there were some complex mediated

patriot games at play as his contribution

to gold medal success challenged

conventional understandings of British

sporting heroism. As we have observed

elsewhere, anti-German sentiments are

characteristic of English media-sport

discourse (Maguire et al. 1999a, 1999b;

Maguire and Poulton 1999; Poulton

2004; Maguire and Burrows 2005). So

while the Daily Mail refrained from

labelling Hindes as a ‘plastic Brit’ in light

of his success, the newspaper was

reluctant to embrace him as a ‘true Brit’

or ‘established’ member of ‘Team GB’.

Instead the Daily Mail, and other

newspapers to a lesser extent, reinforced

the fact that he was ‘German-born’ and

that his error of judgement almost cost

Britain and ‘national treasure’, Hoy,

victory.

Triple-jumper Yamilé Aldama attracted

her fair share of media attention prior to

the Olympic Games, pilloried by some as

one of the most egregious of the so-

called ‘plastic Brits’ because she had

previously represented two other

countries before obtaining British

citizenship and competing for ‘Team GB’.

She had also been arguably the most

vociferous in defending her British

citizenship by telling her complex and

compelling biographical narrative in

several newspaper articles. For example,

her story was profiled by Mark Bailey in a

cover-story interview in the Telegraph Magazine (16 June 2012:1), entitled:

‘Three Steps to Heaven: The incredible

journey of Britain’s globe-trotting triple

jumper’ – a play on words reflecting both

her event, but also perhaps the fact that

Aldama had previously represented her

native Cuba, as well as Sudan, prior to

gaining British citizenship in 2010

(almost a decade after her initial

application for British citizenship when

she married a Scot and relocated to the

UK). Aldama (2012) also told her own

story in The Observer and guardian.co.uk (14 July 2012), directly challenging the

label she had been given:

Plastic Brits. I have been hearing

that term over and over again in

the weeks and months building up

to the Games. At first it did not

bother me. I have lived in this

country for 11 years, I am married

20

www.cf.ac.uk/JOMECjournal @JOMECjournal

to a British man, I have British

children, I train under a British

coach, at a British club. This is my

home. What are they talking about?

But in the past week it has really

begun to upset me. It is so

offensive.

In the article she highlighted how she is

‘not the only athlete ever to have

changed nationality’. By means of

illustration, Aldama (2012) listed: British

tennis legend, Fred Perry; South African-

born Zola Budd4

4 As a South African, Zola Budd was banned from

international competition due to South Africa’s

apartheid policy. Ironically, given the Daily Mail’s current position, the newspaper helped her to

compete for Great Britain at the 1984 Los

Angeles Olympics under a ‘flag of convenience’

with their campaign – led by then Chief Sports

Writer, Ian Wooldridge, and endorsed by editor,

Sir David English – to get the British Government

to fast-track her passport application (her

grandfather was British). Daily Mail executives

lodged Budd’s passport application. When

challenged on this apparent inconsistency,

Samuel, rebutted: ‘Times change. People change.

Views change… Heaven forbid that, 28 years on

from the Budd controversy, a writer has a

different view to a predecessor. It’s hard to be

inconsistent with opinions that were never mine

in the first place’ (Daily Mail, 12 March 2012).

; British athlete Fiona

May, who competes for Italy; South

African-born England cricketer Kevin

Pietersen; and Somalian-born member

of ‘Team GB’, Mo Farah, as examples. She

also mentioned Harold Abrahams

(depicted in the quintessentially British

film Chariots of Fire, which won five

Oscars in 1981 and, significantly, was re-

released prior to London 2012), who

‘suffered a lot because his father was a

Jewish immigrant’.5

These newspapers make the point

that I should never have competed

for Sudan, that I should have

waited for the Home Office to give

me my passport. I did wait, I

waited over two years. But when

my application was turned down –

because of my husband's situation

after he was sent to prison [for

heroin trafficking] – I could not

Remarking how she

‘thought we had moved on from those

days’, Aldama (2012) lamented: ‘But

sometimes I wonder if we have not

moved on enough. There are so many

examples… this campaign against me is

hypocrisy’. Taking the opportunity to set

the record straight for her critics, Aldama

(2012) also explained the complicated

reasons behind her changes of

allegiance:

5 Aldama did not cite the similarly complex

biography of the other main character in Chariots of Fire, British runner Eric Liddell, who was born

in China to Scottish parents (see Cashmore

2008).

21

www.cf.ac.uk/JOMECjournal @JOMECjournal

afford to wait any longer... at a time

when I was ranked No.1 in the

world (guardian.co.uk, 14 July

2012).

Given their interest in Aldama’s life-story,

it is unsurprising that The Guardian and

Daily Telegraph were the only

newspapers to cover her performance in

the Olympic triple jump final in any

detail. Elsewhere her fifth-place finish

was largely overlooked. On a day when

gold medal winning (Scottish) ‘Team GB’

tennis player Andy Murray competed

with Jamaica’s 100m champion, Usain

Bolt, for pole position on the English

(sports) media agenda, Aldama received

negligible coverage in The Sun and only

a short paragraph (lost in reports on

British 400m runner Christine

Ohuruogu’s silver medal, which itself was

relegated to the inside pages) in The Times, Daily Mirror and her bête noir, Daily Mail. All of these highlighted the

fact that Aldama had previously

represented Cuba and Sudan, rather

than commenting on her actual sporting

performance. The Daily Mail’s (6 August

2012:76) Wilson dismissively wrote:

‘Triple jumper Yamilé Aldama is out. She

finished fourth for Cuba in 2000, fifth for

Sudan in 2004 and now fifth again for

Britain’.

In contrast, The Guardian ran a half-page

report in its Olympic supplement.

Directly challenging the ‘mean-spirited

accusations’ that Aldama was a ‘plastic

Brit’, Esther Addley wrote: ‘The

remarkable twists of Aldama’s story have

led to criticisms that she was a ‘plastic

Brit’ and did not deserve to wear [fashion

designer] Stella McCartney’s [‘Team GB’]

strip. But as she clapped slowly above

her head to rouse support before her

final jump, the Olympic Stadium crowd

gave that suggestion their own riposte’.

Addley added: ‘…there is certainly no

suggestion of inauthenticity among her

colleagues in Team GB’ and concluded:

‘Her nationality last night was not in

question’. Similarly supportive was Oliver

Brown in the Daily Telegraph (6 August

2102: S7), whose report headlined:

‘Outstanding Aldama Has Cause to

Celebrate Personal Success’ in which he

observed: ‘in light of the personal turmoil

she has endured in her life this final was

still a cause of celebration’. These

journalists appeared to accept Aldama

as a legitimate, if not established,

member of ‘Team GB’.

Similar issues of identity politics surfaced

in the English press representation of

Tiffany Porter. Having been born and

brought up in the USA (who she

competed for at youth level) by a

22

www.cf.ac.uk/JOMECjournal @JOMECjournal

Nigerian father and English mother,

Porter was the first member of ‘Team GB’

to be labelled a ‘plastic Brit’ by Martin

Samuel of the Daily Mail in June 2011,

despite having held a British passport

since birth. She had attracted further

censure when she was appointed

captain of the British indoor athletics

team in March 2012. A year in advance

of London 2012, Turnbull (2011) profiled

the ‘rising star of women’s hurdling’ in

The Independent (4 August 2011),

suggesting that Porter was ‘Set to Silence

Critics by Being Plastic Fantastic’.

However, while Porter reached the semi-

finals of the Olympic 100m hurdles, she

did not qualify for the final. Consequently

she was given similar treatment to that

which befell Aldama: relegated to short

paragraphs at the end of other reports,

with an emphasis on her place of birth.

For example, the Daily Mail’s (8 August

2012:79) Laura Williamson wrote: ‘There

was more misfortune for Tiffany Porter,

the 24 year old running for Great Britain

despite being born and raised in

Michigan, America’. Underlining her

‘nationality’ further, Williamson

concluded: ‘Porter, whose husband Jeff

reached the semi-finals of the men’s

110m hurdles in American colours

earlier yesterday, was knocked out in the

semi-finals of the 100m hurdles’. The

Guardian (8 August 2012: 7, Olympics

supplement) did not mention Porter’s

birthplace in their brief paragraph, noting

instead how: ‘She surely would have

made it had an old back injury not flared

up’. The Daily Mirror gave Porter a

solitary sentence, while there was barely

any mention of her at all in The Sun, The Times and Daily Telegraph. It would seem

that Porter was not recognised by these

newspaper’s sports editors as a worthy

or ‘established’ member of ‘Team GB’.

It should be acknowledged that ‘Team

GB’ successes elsewhere may have

accounted for this apparent lack of

interest in Porter. The newspapers the

day after her failure to qualify for her

final positioned Hoy’s record-breaking

sixth gold medal atop of the English

media agenda, along with ‘Team GB’

equalling their best medal tally since

1908 as they secured four more gold

medals (including historic victories in the

men’s triathlon and team dressage

competition). However, as Falcous and

Maguire (2005) note with regard to ‘local’

British identities, while sport fans are

content for ‘foreigners’ to play for their

clubs (and indeed sometimes the nation)

provided they are successful, their

preference is for a local who looks, or at

least sounds, like them.

23

www.cf.ac.uk/JOMECjournal @JOMECjournal

Preliminary conclusions

This study has examined the framing,

construction and representation of

members of ‘Team GB’ in the English

media-sport discourse surrounding

London 2012. Specifically, the study –

underpinned by the process sociological

concepts of identity politics, globalising

processes and established-outsider

relations – explored precisely who the

English press chose to include/embrace

as (authentic) members of ‘Team GB’,

and who they opted to exclude/reject, in

the context of the Daily Mail’s pre-Games

campaign against ‘plastic Brits’. Our

preliminary analysis indicates that the

media-sport discourse found in the

press coverage of London 2012

performed a similar function that has

been highlighted elsewhere about

national identity politics during sports

mega-events as collective occasions of

perceived national importance (Maguire

and Poulton 1999; Maguire et al. 1999a,

199b; Poulton 2004). That is, such

discourse reinforced an intense sense of

British national identity – while also

giving cause to re-assess what this

actually meant – as mediated patriot

games were played out during the

Olympic Games, against a backdrop of

wider geo-political and social currents.

We offer three main emergent findings

from our qualitative content analysis of

the English press coverage: (1) while

present in advance of the Olympic

Games, the ‘plastic Brit’ narrative was

largely absent during the Games

themselves; (2) performances by ‘plastic’

members of ‘Team GB’ were de-

amplified in covert discourses pertaining

to established-outsider relations: ‘plastic

Brit’ successes (such as Hindes’ gold

medal) were celebrated, though not as

much as those by ‘true Brits’, whereas

‘plastic Brit’ ‘failures’ (for example, Porter

and Aldama) were generally disregarded

and relegated to the sidelines; (3) hosting

the Olympic Games and show-casing the

country to the watching world

encouraged journalists and politicians

alike to (re)interpret and attempt to

make sense of contemporary Britain,

with the pre-Games cynicism about the

cost of hosting and securing the Games

apparently (temporarily) forgotten. As

such, our analysis contributes to wider

socio-cultural and geo-political debates,

as well as scholarship, on the concept of

national identity, foreign policy and, in

particular, the notion of ‘Britishness’. Let

us expand on these early observations.

24

www.cf.ac.uk/JOMECjournal @JOMECjournal

While the ‘plastic Brit’ narrative was

present throughout a year-long build-up

to the Games, the ‘plastic Brit’ label was

conspicuous by its absence during the

coverage of the Games themselves. The

story was occasionally reproduced, but

only in riposte to those who had used

the epithet. However, the day after the

closing ceremony, the instigator of the

Daily Mail’s campaign against ‘plastic

Brits’, Martin Samuel, offered: ‘My Final

Word on the Plastic Brits (For Now)’ (Daily Mail, 13 August 2012:61). He wrote:

The debate around national

qualification in sport will fade from

sight now, without a home Games

putting it on the agenda, but do

not imagine it no longer matters.

Half the people who pontificated

on the issues around Plastic Brits

– I should invoice – did not

understand the parameters

anyway. It was always about sport,

never about society (Samuel

2012b).

Samuel (2012b) was critical of ‘Yasmin

Alibhai-Brown in The Independent dim-

wittedly linking it to attacks on

multiculturalism and immigration’.

Samuel argued:

I think the fact that Tiffany Porter

did not even make the 100 metres

hurdles final and three American

women finished in the top four of

it, suggests suspicions of her

motives for abandoning the United

States for Great Britain were

justified, and not an attack on

multiculturalism or immigration.

This denial was repeated in the Daily Mail’s (13 August 2012:14) main editorial:

Inevitably, everybody wants to

claim the overwhelming success of

the Games for themselves, with the

Left presenting them as a victory

for multiculturalism. In fact, they

are a victory for British pride and

patriotism, supportive families,

shared loyalties and common

values – whatever our ethnic

backgrounds (Dacre 2012).

This unusually inclusivist rhetoric from

the Daily’s Mail editor, Paul Dacre, helps

explain how Mo Farah (despite his

potentially ‘plastic’ credentials) came to

be so fully embraced across the English

media, including the Daily Mail. Samuel

(2012b) described him as thus: ‘Mo

Farah represents the best of modern

Britain and his story could not be further

removed from the opportunism that is

25

www.cf.ac.uk/JOMECjournal @JOMECjournal

becoming increasingly prevalent in

modern international sport’ (Daily Mail, 13 August 2012:61).

Similar discourse was evident

throughout the newspapers, as ‘Team

GB’s’ third place in the Olympic medal

table (with a record haul of 65 medals)

provided the press corps with the fuel to

construct and reproduce a patriotic ‘feel-

good factor’, as an extension of the

Queen’s Jubilee celebrations (see

Hilvoorde et al. 2010 for a discussion of

how the Olympic medal index is used by

nations as a unifying narrative). This was

evident in both the tabloid and

broadsheet newspapers half-way through

the Games after the media-labelled

‘Super Saturday’, when ‘Team GB’ won an

historic three track and field gold medals

within an hour courtesy of: ‘A ginger

bloke from Milton Keynes [Greg

Rutherford], a mixed race beauty from

Sheffield [Jessica Ennis], an ethnic

Somali [Mo Farah] given shelter on these

shores from his war-ravaged homeland’

(The Sun, 6 August 2012:6-7). Celebrating

this achievement under the headline:

‘Marvellous Modern Britain Unleashed

Upon the World’, The Sun’s Oliver Harvey

declared: ‘This is what Britain looks like today’. In The Sun’s editorial (6 August

2012:10), Dominic Mohan proudly

observed:

Danny Boyle got it right on opening

night. We’ve become a human

kaleidoscope of a country where

those of every race, faith and

background are part of a huge and

mostly happy family united by

being proudly British… Like those

representing Team GB on the track

in the Olympic Stadium on Super

Saturday, the 80,000 in the stands

presented the genuine, multi-

cultural face of these lands:

Decent, sporting, tolerant, fair-

minded and free of bigotry or

racism. That is why the far Right

are wasting their time. They have

lost.

Similar sentiments were echoed in the

Daily Telegraph (6 August 2012:2), with

Michael Deacon (2012) also pointing to

the diversity of British society and what

this might mean for British national

identity:

Look at it this way, Mo Farah is an

immigrant. Jessica Ennis is mixed

race. Most of our gold-winning

rowers are women. Clare Balding,

the BBC’s best and most popular

Olympics presenter, is gay. In other

words: these Games are a triumph

not only for Britain; they’re a

triumph for modern Britain.

26

www.cf.ac.uk/JOMECjournal @JOMECjournal

Despite their protestations that the

success of the London 2012 Olympic

Games was testimony to British

multiculturalism, this line of thinking may

have underscored the advertisement on

the front-page of the Daily Mail the day

after the closing ceremony for a ‘Giant

Free Mo Poster’ (instead of perhaps

Jessica Ennis or Sir Chris Hoy). The

poster depicted Farah in his celebratory

‘Mobot’ pose, with the caption: ‘Two

Weeks That Made Britain Great Again’. It

would seem that the selection policy

allowing for the inclusion of some ‘plastic

Brits’ at least helped to make Britain feel

great again, if only for a memorably

‘fantastic’ fortnight during London 2012.

It is unclear, however, how long such

euphoria – ‘imagined’ or ‘real’, ‘invented’

or part of the national habitus of some

Britons – will last.

References

Anon. (2012a), ‘Now the plastic Brits are taking over! Porter is controversial choice as Team GB

captain’, Daily Mail, 8 March. Available at: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/olympics/article-

2112076/Tiffany-Porter-named-Team-GB-captain-World-Indoor-Championships.html

[Accessed 11 July 2012].

Anon. (2012b), ‘Team GB have 61 ‘Plastic Brits’ taking part in London Olympics’, Daily Mail, 11 July.

Available at: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/olympics/article-2171923/London-2012-

Games-Team-GB-61-plastic-Brits.html [Accessed 11 July 2012].

Aldama, Y. (2012), ‘Yamilé Aldama: Plastic Brit jibe is so offensive in our country today’, The Guardian, 14 July. Available at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2012/jul/14/yamile-

aldama-plastic-brit-jibe-offensive [Accessed 16 July 2012].

Anderson, B. (1983), Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism,

London: Verso.

Bailey, M. (2012), ‘Giant Leaps’, Telegraph Magazine, 16 June, pp. 26-33.

Blain, N., Boyle, R. and O’Donnell, H. (1993), Sport and national identity in the European media,

Leicester: Leicester University Press.

27

www.cf.ac.uk/JOMECjournal @JOMECjournal

Burdsey, D. (2007), ‘‘Role with the punches’: The construction and representation of Amir Khan as

a role model for multiethnic Britain’, Sociological Review, 55(3), 611-631.

Cashmore, E. (2008), ‘Chariots of Fire: Bigotry, manhood and moral certitude in an age of

individualism’, in: Poulton, E and Roderick, M. (eds.) Sport in films, London: Routledge: 44-57.

Crolley, L. and Hand, D. (2002), Football, Europe and the press, London: Frank Cass.

Dacre, P. (2012), ‘Olympics that prove UK Can still deliver’, Daily Mail, 13 August, p. 14.

Deacon, M. (2012), ‘High drama and irresistible emotion, and that’s just the commentators’, Daily Telegraph, 6 August, p. 2.

Elias, N. (1991), The Society of individuals, Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Elias, N. (1996), The Germans. Power struggles and the development of habitus in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Cambridge: Polity Press.

Elias, N. and Scotson, J.L. (1994), The established and the outsiders: A sociological enquiry into community problems, London: Frank Cass.

Falcous, M. (2007), ‘The decolonizing national imaginary: Promotional media constructions during

the 2005 British Lions Tour of Aotearoa New Zealand’, Journal of Sport and Social Issues,

31(4), 374-393.

Falcous, M. and Maguire, J. (2005), ‘Globetrotters and local heroes?: Labour migration, basketball

and local identities’, Sociology of Sport Journal, 22(2),137-157.

Fenton, S. (2007), ‘Indifference towards national identity: What young adults think about being

English and British’, Nations & Nationalism, 13(2), 321-399.

Hart, S. (2012), ‘Team GB: ‘Plastic Brits’ – Where do they come from?’, Daily Telegraph, 10 July.

Available from:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/olympics/olympic_infographics_and_data/9391327/Team-

GB-Plastic-Brits-where-do-they-come-from.html [Accessed 10 July 2012].

Harvey, O. (2012), ‘Marvellous modern Britain unleashed upon the world’, The Sun, 6 August, pp. 6-

7.

Hills, L. and Kennedy, E. (2009), ‘Double trouble: Kelly Holmes, intersectionality and unstable

narratives of Olympic heroism in the British media’, in: Markula, P. (ed.) Olympic women and the media: International perspectives, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 112- 131.

28

www.cf.ac.uk/JOMECjournal @JOMECjournal

Hilvoorde, van I., Elling, A. and Stokvis, R. (2010), ‘How to influence national pride? The Olympic

medal index as a unifying narrative’, International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 45(1), 87-

102.

Katwala, S. (2012), ‘Plastic Brits – and the Mail’s struggle to decide who isn’t British’, Daily Mail, 13

March. Available at: http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-staggers/2012/03/british-

team-mail-plastic [Accessed 7 July 2012].

Kelly, D. (2012), ‘Plastic Brits insult our Games’, Daily Mail, 9 March. Available at:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/article-2112899/London-2012-Olympics-Plastic-Brits-

insult-Games--Des-Kelly.html#ixzz24BSybfE5 [Accessed 7 July 2012].

Kumar, K. (2010), ‘Negotiating English identity: Englishness, Britishness and the future of the

United Kingdom’, Nations & Nationalism, 16(3), 469-487.

Lee, J. and Maguire, J. (2011), ‘Road to reunification? Unitary Korean nationalism in South Korean

media coverage of the 2004 Athens Olympic Games’, Sociology, 45(5), 848-867.

Maguire, J. (2012), ‘European body cultures and the making of the modern world: Zones of

prestige and established-outsider relations’, Human Figurations, 1(1). Available at:

http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-

idx?c=humfig;view=text;rgn=main;idno=11217607.0001.105 [Accessed 4 September 2012].

Maguire, J. (2011), ‘Globalization, sport and national identities’, Sport in Society, 14(7/8), 978-993.

Maguire, J. (2008), ‘‘Real politic’ or ‘ethnically based’: Sport, globalization, migration and nation-

state policies’, Sport in Society, 11(4), 443-458.

Maguire, J. and Burrows, M. (2005), ‘‘Not the Germans again’: Soccer, identity politics and the

media’, in Maguire, J. (ed.) Power and global sport: Zones of prestige, emulation and resistance, London: Routledge, 130-142.

Maguire, J. and Falcous, M. (2010) (eds), Sport and migration: Borders, boundaries and crossings, London: Routledge.

Maguire, J. and Poulton, E. (1999), ‘European identity politics in Euro 96: Invented traditions and

national habitus codes’, International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 34(1), 17-29.

Maguire, J., Poulton, E. and Possamai, C. (1999a), ‘Weltkrieg III? Media coverage of England versus

Germany in Euro 96’, Journal of Sport and Social Issues, 23(4), 439-454.

29

www.cf.ac.uk/JOMECjournal @JOMECjournal

Maguire, J., Poulton, E. and Possamai, C. (1999b), ‘The war of the words? Identity politics in Anglo-

German press coverage of Euro 96’, European Journal of Communication, 15(1), 61-89.

Maguire, J and Tuck, J. (2005), ‘National identity, rugby union and notions of Ireland and the Irish’,

Irish Journal of Sociology, 14, 86-109.

Marsden, S. and Rayner, G. (2012), ‘The Young Heir to the Cycling Crown’, Daily Telegraph, 3

August, p. 2.

Mayring, P. (2000), ‘Qualitative content analysis’, Forum: Qualitative Social Research / Sozialforschung, 1(2). Available at: http://www.qualitative-

research.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/1089 [Accessed 4 October 2012].

McCrone, D. (2002), ‘'Who do you say you are?' Making sense of national identities in modern

Britain’, Ethnicities, 2, 301-320.

McEvoy, J. (2012) ‘It could have been Farah or Ennis but our athletes will be led by a Plastic Brit’,

Daily Mail, 8 March. Available at: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/olympics/article-

2112352/Tiffany-Porter-lead-Team-GB-World-Indoor-Championships.html [Accessed: 16 July

2012].

Mohan, D. (2012), ‘Britain United’, The Sun, 6 August, p. 10.

Poulton, E. (2004), ‘Mediated patriot games: The construction and representation of national

identities in the media coverage of sport’, International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 39(4), 437-455.

Poulton, E. and Roderick, M. (2008) (eds.), Sport in films, London: Routledge.

Reid, I. (2010), ‘‘The stone of destiny’: Team GB curling as a site for contested national discourse’,

Sport in Society, 13(3), 399-417.

Rowe, D., McKay, J. and Miller, T. (1998), ‘Come together: Sport, nationalism, and the media image’,

in Wenner, L.A. (ed), MediaSport, London: Routledge, 119-133.

Samuel, M. (2011), ‘Plastic Brits are using Team GB to fulfil their own Olympic dreams’. Daily Mail,13June. Available at: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/article-2002802/Martin-Samuel-

London-2012-ruined-plastic-Brits.html [Accessed 16 July 2012].

30

www.cf.ac.uk/JOMECjournal @JOMECjournal

Samuel, M. (2012a), ‘If it’s not our best against your best then what’s the point?’, Daily Mail, 12

March. Available at: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/article-2113608/Plastic-Brits-If-best-

best-whats-point-Martin-Samuel.html [Accessed: 16 July 2012].

Samuel, M. (2012b), ‘My final word on the Plastic Brits (for now)’, Daily Mail, 13 August, p.61.

Slot, O. (2012), ‘Hoy, noise and boy wonder’, The Times (The Games supplement), 3 August, pp. 4-5.

Speck, I. (2012), ‘CRASH! Hoy’s historic gold tainted by cheat storm’, Daily Mail, 3 August, p. 88.

Turnbull, S. (2011), ‘Tiffany Porter: Set to silence critics by being plastic fantastic’, The Independent, 4 August. Available at: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/tiffany-porter-set-

to-silence-critics-by-being-plastic-fantastic-2331239.html [Accessed 22 March 2012].

Tuck, J. (2003), ‘The men in white: Reflections on rugby union, the media and Englishness’,

International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 38(2), 177-199.

Walters, M. (2012), ‘Why it's time to back our dual-nationality stars, not label them ‘plastic’’, Daily Mirror, 15 March. Available at: http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/other-sports/athletics/why-its-

time-to-back-our-dual-nationality-stars-762381 [Accessed 7 July 2012].

Williams, R. (2012), ‘Hoy scoops his fifth gold but Pendleton pays for illegal move’, The Guardian, 3

August, p. 3.

Wilson, N. (2011), ‘Plastic Brits are cashing in (but there’s no Lottery money for the likes of Kelly’.

Daily Mail, 17 October. Available at: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/olympics/article-

2050242/Plastic-Brits-given-Lottery-funding-British-athletes.html [Accessed: 16 July 2012].

Wilson, N. (2012), ‘There’s no way I’ll be standing for National Anthem when ‘Plastic Brit’ Porter

wins gold’ Daily Mail, 9 March. Available at: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/olympics/article-

2112637/LONDON-2012-OLYMPICS-Plastic-Brits-wont-getting-support-says-Neil-

Wilson.html#ixzz24BQvRsHF [Accessed 16 July 2012].

Vincent, J., Kian, E., Pedersen, P., Kuntz, A. and Hill, J. (2010), ‘England expects: English newspapers’

narratives about the English football team in the 2006 World Cup’, International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 45(2),199-223.

Whannel, G. (2002), Media sport stars: Masculinities and moralities, London: Routledge.

Whannel, G. (1992), Fields in vision: Television sport and cultural transformation. London:

Routledge.

This article was first published in JOMEC Journal

JOMEC Journal is an online, open-access and peer reviewed journal dedicated to publishing the highest quality innovative academic work in Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies. It is run by an editorial collective based in the School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies at Cardiff University, committed both to open-access publication and to maintaining the highest standards of rigour and academic integrity. JOMEC Journal is peer reviewed with an international, multi-disciplinary Editorial Board and Advisory Panel. It welcomes work that is located in any one of these disciplines, as well as interdisciplinary work that approaches Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies as overlapping and interlocking fields. It is particularly interested in work that addresses the political and ethical dimensions, stakes, problematics and possibilities of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies.

To submit a paper or to discuss publication, please contact:

Dr Paul Bowman: BowmanP@cf.ac.uk

www.cf.ac.uk/jomecjournal

Twitter: @JOMECjournal

ISSN: ISSN 2049-2340

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported

License. Based on a work at www.cf.ac.uk/jomecjournal.

.